Judge George Logan, ex-Elizabeth mayoral candidate, dies

Judge George Logan III, who became the first African American candidate for mayor of Elizabeth, died on December 10.  He was 76.

He later moved to Arizona and became a judge.

Logan was 25-years-old when he entered the race for 1968 Democratic mayoral nomination against first-term mayor Thomas Dunn.

Dunn defeated Assemblyman Joseph Higgins (D-Elizabeth) by a 63%-26% margin, with Logan finishing third with 11% of the vote.

Logan grew up in Elizabeth and served as president of the Rutgers branch of the NAACP in the early 1960s.  He registered African American voters in Mississippi in 1964, working for civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, and attended Rutgers Law School where he was a student of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

After law school, he joined the staff of the Center of Constitutional Rights in New York.

After his run for mayor, Logan joined the U.S. Air Force and became a Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps captain.  He became one of the first African American military judges.

Logan served as chief administrative law judge for the Arizona Department of Economic Security for eleven years.

In 1999, he was appointed to serve as a municipal court judge for the City of Phoenix.  He was the president judge for the City of Sunrise from 2006 until his retirement in 2013.

Logan is survived by his wife, Jackie, three children and seven grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 2 PM on December 23 at the Nesbitt Funeral Home in Elizabeth.